Prep Football: NIC-10 Advance

Thursday

Oct 24, 2013 at 2:00 PM

By Matt TrowbridgeRockford Register Star

Make history. Or go home.

It's a simple but daunting task for Belvidere, which will only make the playoffs for the third year in a row (and 24th time in 29 years) if it snaps Boylan's 73-game conference winning streak tomorrow.

Belvidere (4-4) opened the season with an impressive 34-14 drubbing of Belvidere North — a team that beat Hononegah and led Boylan until the final minute last week — but lost four games in a row in the middle of the season before winning its last two.

"For our kids, this is the third week of the playoffs," coach Chuck Leonard said. "We dug ourselves a hole early in the season and let a couple of games slip away from us that we feel we should have pulled out. We told our kids three weeks ago we had to run the table to get in. Our kids played well against Freeport and East. Now we have the biggest and best coming at us Friday night, but our kids are excited about the opportunity."

Boylan also seemed to be letting games slip away. The Titans led Auburn by only two points until the last five minutes of their season opener. Fell three touchdowns behind Hononegah before winning in the final seconds. And blew a 24-point lead last week to twice trail Belvidere North in the fourth quarter before converting a fourth-and-8 and then scoring the winning TD with just over a minute to play.

"Boylan is right where everybody in the conference wants to get," Leonard said. "The athletes at Boylan expect to win every game. They never panicked against North. They never panicked against Hononegah. They believed they were going to somehow find a way to win. That's where every coach is trying to get."

"That's one way of looking at it," Boylan coach John Cacciatore said. "If you call those tight situations tests, we have passed a great deal of them. If we have those situations in the playoffs, the kids will have it in the back of their minds that if it comes down to one play, we can execute it. That's a plus. but I don't like that we dug ourselves into those situations."

Belvidere's hopes hinge greatly on Maurice Jackson (771 yards rushing, 370 receiving) and Garrett Hyser, who has passed for a school-record 1,462 yards. North rallied against Boylan last week with 378 passing yards.

"Garrett has been great for us all year," Leonard said. "He'll make a terrible throw, come to the sideline and say, 'That's on me. That won't happen again.' He then comes out the next series to throw a pass 30 yards down the field right between two defenders on the money. He's been better than I ever could have expected."